Having been running my business for over 2 years now, it is clear that for smaller businesses, one barrier is often cost, but more often than that, the concern that owners don’t understand how to make social media marketing work for them.

However, it doesn’t have to be complicated (or expensive) to be successful. Whilst an inactive account on Facebook or LinkedIn can be more damaging than having no account at all, it doesn’t have to take long to make your accounts proactive and appealing to prospective customers or clients.

So how do you do this?

Identify who you most want to connect with – by doing this you can work out which platforms will work most effectively for you.

Create some basic content – most social media works most effectively with the use of images. However, you don’t need a graphic designer to create this (although of course it could be beneficial in some cases) and there are plenty of FREE apps on the market to help you such as Canva, Wordswag, Picsart. Take a look at what is available under their free trials.

Make your content engaging – look at your competitors and see what inspires you. Think about what your customers love about your work and normally that is what you need to be sharing with your social media audience.

Consistency – make sure you post on a consistent basis so that your followers know what they can expect from you. That doesn’t mean bombarding them until they switch off your profile, but it does mean making sure that you have a schedule each month. And if you’re worried about remembering to post, don’t forget that there are lots of scheduling tools that can help you. This means that you could set aside a couple of hours a month and at the end of this time you’ll have your content ready to post across all the platforms you want. Job done and now you can get back to your core business.

Be Yourself – one of the main things is to let your brand speak for itself. I have been known to talk people out of work with me, as I genuinely believe that if you have the time and will, social media is best done by someone within the business!

Of course, if you don’t have the time for this, I’m always happy to help!!

If you would like to have a free 20 minute consultation to discuss your social media needs, please get on touch on 07974 074401